Letter 12/15/2013

I've been super scared for the cold weather but I don't think it's going to be that bad. It was -7  degrees celsius last night and I didn't think anything of it. I am concerned about my feet. They become numb and it's scary to walk on ice when you don't have control over your feet. The sidewalks are almost completely ice and it's okay for us - we link arms and save each other when we slip (we're pretty cute) - but we're scared for the poor grandmothers. I saw a grandmother today who was wearing bright pink socks (with a cute animal) over her shoes to prevent her from slipping. 

The bricks in the sidewalks aren't smooth so they create fun little hills of ice to slip on. The snow here is different than Utah or Illinois snow (or Virginia snow). The flakes are huge - huge, I tell you - and they're really icy. The snow is really pretty but it isn't super fun to play in. We tried to make a snowman in our church parking lot while we waiting for our students to show up for English class but the snow wouldn't stick and we were just sliding all over the parking lot. 

Korean rice is wonderful, truly wonderful. I could eat it for every meal. Korea has the super cute bakeries and French-style bread shops like Japan with the delicious milk bread. I don't understand why Americans eat so much bread but Americans haven't figured out how to make truly yummy bread.

I don't feel like I'm in a foreign country anymore. Everything seems perfectly normal and familiar.

I had a beautiful breakthrough this week with Korean. I just started understanding more of it. And I started speaking more. Words that I had had trouble remembering before now come quickly to my mind and I can say almost anything I want to say (I'm not fluent, however - I'm sure I sound like a three-year-old).

One of the missionaries in my ward says that I act super cute and I act like I'm Japanese. (He has AMAZING English and he can speak Japanese) I never realized how Japanese I was until I came here. I felt so different in Japan so I thought I was more American and I think I tried to be more American (wanting what you can't have mentality) so it's interesting to me to have other Asians tell me how Asian I am. I realized that I say "we" when referring to both Americans and Japanese.

I wrote "I can do hard things" on a paper and stuck it on a wall by my desk, thinking of Grandma. (this was a challenge from her Grandma Limburg, who is serving a mission in Fiji right now)

We weren't able to do a lot of street contacting this week. Because it's so cold hardly anyone is outside.

Students are finishing up their finals this week so people will stop ignoring us (hopefully!!). As you can imagine, they have super intense finals in all 13 subjects that make or break their hopes for college. School ends next week and doesn't start again until you guys come. Because everyone will be on break we're hoping to build good relationships with the Young Women, visit lots of Less Actives and teach lots of lessons to members and investigators. They probably have their long break in the winter because it's too cold to leave one's house.

We met with one of our investigators this week that we teach English and the gospel. She isn't interested in the gospel, nor does she have any Christian background so we asked her to read a pamphlet and come back with questions. The questions she came back with were crazy!!! The first one was; "Some people say God is an alien. What do you think about that? They say He is just an alien with special powers and intelligence and we are his/their (what's the word.... crop? experiment?). The pyramids were built by aliens and they possess special powers."

We watched the (Christmas Devotional) broadcast last night at our stake center. I couldn't understand much but I still had my notebook and pencil ready and I did have some good inspirations to write down that didn't come from spoken words.